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PEDESTRIAN ACCIDENTS OCCUR EVERY DAY IN OUR INCREASINGLY INTENSIVE TRAFFIC ENVIROMENT.
IN EUROPE, 14% OF ALL FATALITIES ARE PEDESTRIAN.
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PEDESTRIAN DETECTION WITH FULL AUTO BRAKE BY VOLVO CAR CORPORATION

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Volvo Cars has a very clear aim with its new safety vision.
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In the long term it is quite simply a question of building and designing cars that should not crash.
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In the shorter term by 2020 the aim is that nobody will die or be injured in a Volvo.
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But is this really a realistic vision?
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If you looked at safety from a global perspective, there are more than 1.2 million people being killed each year in traffic.
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And if you take Europe as an example, it is around 40,000 people being killed, the same as in the US.
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And if you looked at these numbers, that is only the fatalities. If you look at all the injuries that also occur - that’s millions.
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So, safety is not a problem, road traffic safety is not a problem, to me it is an epidemic.
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We need to address it and I think we need to address it with that approach.
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Because - why should it be allowed?
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In order to achieve a crash free future, of course requires that car manufacturers, authorities, infrastructure planners,
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and other experts around the world collaborate with each other.
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Volvo’s researchers feel that the vision is perfectly realistic if the collective knowledge is utilised in the right way.
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All this is based on knowledge - we need to gain new knowledge and we are using the knowledge that we already built.
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We have a traffic accident research team that has been working for decades.
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Not only to understand what type of collisions are out on the field and what injuries you see, but also what caused those collisions.
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And as we move towards the future we try to understand the drivers and the driver behaviour even better.
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Not only studying collisions but also studying normal driving.
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To better be able to understand how we can assist drivers to avoid getting into critical situations in the first place.
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And the knowledge acquired by studying real traffic accidents in detail is extraordinary important for the researchers.
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I used data very much to understand what priorities there are, what areas to improve with respect safety.
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I also used the data to understand the mechanisms behind different types of accidents or injuries.
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Take, for instance, the whiplash protection study we did 10 or 15 years ago.
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We have used the accident data to understand the mechanisms and understand on how we can improve the cars.
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Tomorrow’s cars will have a completely new technology that helps drivers to avoid collisions.
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In Volvo’s new XC60 model, for example, City Safety is standard.
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This is a unique collisions avoidance technique that with a laser sensor based technology helps avoid or mitigate low speed crashes.
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I think City Safety is a good example because here we are taking a step in actually having an offer of collision avoidance and we are making it standard.
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This new technology has already received a tremendous amount of attention all over the world.
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At the British motor insurance repair research center in Thatcham,
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where they carry out research and development to promote and encourage the building of safer cars,
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they are most impressed.
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Thatcham is very excited about the new Volvo City Safety system.
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See - 80% of accidents occur at speeds of up to 20mph.
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And 90% of injuries, the majority of which are whiplash, occur in these sorts of situations.
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City Safety is designed to directly address these issues. And therefore we think it has huge potential at reducing real world injuries and material damage.
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Volvo Cars takes a long term view of its safety operations,
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but even in a shorter time as 10 years, it is estimated that we all have a considerably better and safer traffic environment then we have today.
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In 10 years we will have much better knowledge in understanding human behaviour and how we work up here
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when we are out in traffic and out driving.
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We are currently starting to address issues that we know are a major cause of collisions and injuries.
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In the field unconcentrated drivers, distracted drivers, alcohol, are an aspect that we are considering with an alcohol gauge system already today.
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We are taking it piece by piece.
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And as we gain knowledge from studying real drivers in real traffic environments,
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we will have more innovative technologies to assist them to be safe and progress in hopefully avoiding collisions.
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We are at the beginning of a collision avoidance revolution.
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For a long time now vehicle safety engineers have looked at secondary safety.
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They have looked at the ability of a vehicle to sustain the forces of an impact and protect the driver with airbags and seatbelts.
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This new technology is going one stage further. Because this new technology is preventing the accident occurring in the first place.
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And prevention is better than cure.
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And at Volvo they are now working resolutely to realize their vision of building cars that cannot crash.
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Quite simply they refuse to accept people dying in motor accidents.
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The number one key is as always is knowledge. Safety is all about knowledge.
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Knowledge from real traffic accidents, knowledge about people, about how we work that is the key here.
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I think in order to address and find new innovative technologies to address different aspects of what can occur in real traffic environments.
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Because it can be very complex.

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It’s -18 degrees Celsius just outside the Swedish mining town Kiruna, north of the Arctic circle.
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In this environment Volvo Cars winter tests their cars and it is here the Volvo C30 Electric has to show its true colours.
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Extreme cold can be a particular challenge for electric cars.
Annelie Gustavsson Product Manager Volvo Cars
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The winter is affecting the electric car in such a way,
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that we have to adjust the temperature for the compartment where the driver is sitting
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and also for the battery so that they can deliver the power that is requested.
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But there are technical solutions that maintain heat for both batteries and passengers inside the car in conditions like these.
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When it is cold, an Ethanol powered fuel heater to maintain a warm temperature.
Annelie Gustavsson Product Manager Volvo Cars
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We have managed this in this C30 Electric by using three different climate systems,
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which cooperate and distribute heat where it is needed and optimized to the driving conditions.
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How far can you drive when it is -10 degrees Celsius?
Annelie Gustavson Product Manager Volvo Cars
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In -10 I would say you can drive 80 to 90 km and of course it depends on how you drive.
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Volvo Cars are in the middle of their final winter test for electric cars.
Andreas Olsson Test Engineer Volvo Cars
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We do it like a normal customer - start the car and take away.
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The expectation of the car is just like any day of the year.
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It copes very well with the driver and we have driven it down in -33 degrees Celsius outside, inside the coupe it’s warm and cosy.
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What do the journalists who have test driven the electric car on site in this Arctic winter think?
Thomas Berggren Journalist Auto Motor & Sport.
Erik Gustafsson Journalist Teknikens Varlid.
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It differs very little from driving a petrol or a diesel driven car.
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I would say it is so little difference you won’t even notice it if it is an automatic gearbox in the car.
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It was warm as a normal car - just put on the AC and then it was just fine.
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We took the car - it was -18 degrees Celsius in the air, we had three minutes and we had acceptable heat in the car. Which I thought was very good.
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Well, it seems that the Volvo C30 Electric has no problem coping with the cold.
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The car’s unique climate control system has sufficient capacity to warm up the batteries
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and still ensure that it is more than acceptably warm inside the car.
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It’s possible to drive up to 70 to 80 km even if it is extremely cold, -33 degrees for example.
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Volvo Cars has a strong believe in the future of the electric car that can in fact provide up to 90% of personal transport by car.

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This advanced facility has two test tracks: One permanent and one moveable.
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The moveable track can be turned by as much as 90 degrees.
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The unique design of these tracks makes it possible to crash-test cars of different sizes,
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at different speeds, from different angles and in different traffic environments
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- a major advance for safety research and one which is unique to Volvo.
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Laser technology ensures that the tests are conducted in exactly the right position
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and at exactly the right speed.
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The events are documented by senses and high-speed cameras.
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Volvo´s high-tech crash barrier weighs 800 tonnes and is moved into place by air cushions.
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This barrier makes it possible to recreate many different accident situations
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and thereby develop even more effective protection.

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Nearly 3000 crashes have been carried out here at Volvo’s high tech crash test laboratory in Gothenburg, that this year celebrates its ten year anniversary.
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It’s in here that Volvo cars safety experts and researchers acquire the knowledge that is essential to develop traffic safety and make tomorrow’s cars even safer.
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It’s estimated that 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic accidents each year.
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And looking at it from that perspective you can say that, well, road traffic safety is not really a problem, it’s much, much more than that. It’s an epidemic.
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So of course we need to address that and knowledge is really the key here and that’s what this centre is all about:
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Building knowledge to try to prevent this in de future.
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And it’s a matter of fact that Volvo Cars safety centre here in Gothenburg is unique in many ways.
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This place is where the car to cat impact takes place.
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We have one moving car travelling in that track and another car which can’t ravel from this tunnel. And this tunnel can be moved in direction all the way back here.
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Because in the real world any crash can occur. So you can have an impact in any angle.
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And this facility makes it possible to reconstruct all these different impact angles and different impact speeds. And even track the car impacts.
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We’re actually standing on a glass floor. Beneath us we have cameras.
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We also have cameras above us.
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And on all the sides of the cars when impacted. As well as inside the cars.
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Everything needs to be documented. Otherwise you can’t save it.
Thomas Broberg – Senior Technical Advisor
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This is the tunnel that is used to conduct both car to car crashes as well as to crash cars on the outside of the building.
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So the tunnel here is actually moveable on aircushions. It weighs 650 tons and
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It’s moveable so we can get any angle on it into the centre here from 0 to 90 degrees.
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5, 4, 3, 2, 1
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The track here is reversible, so we can shoot cars both into the building and we can shoot cars out of the building so behind me here you see the gate.
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And on the outside there we can actually built different traffic scenarios from real life.
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I would say it is so little difference you won’t even notice it if it is an automatic gearbox in the car.
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All crashes here in the lab are filmed with a special high speed cameras.
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We need all these high speed cameras in order to catch the whole crash event from all the different angles.
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Because a crash is over is less than a tenth of a second.
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That’s a shorter time than you can blink so we need to have it all on film in order to do a proper analysis afterwards.
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The mayor advantage of this installation is that it is possible to complete the realistic crashes from in principle any angle and at any speed.
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Which provides valuable knowledge and competence.
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First of all it gives us a unique flexibility in the sense that we can do not only car to car crashes but also car to truck crashes.
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This track alone has a capacity of pushing a car, a 3 ton car, in 90 km an hour.
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And we can do car to car crashes in different angles and different speeds with different offsets
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as well as having the capacity of actually building real world traffic environments on the outside where we can crash cars into them.
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And there are plenty of good examples to show that this research has resulted in safer cars.
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Well one example is the fact that when impacting within the oblique angles x
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You have special challenges in respect to airbag deployments, airbag coverage areas and things like that you can’t see when you don’t do those sort of crashes.
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The crash test dummies that are used are also extremely important in this research.
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In the future I think we will see even more flexible dummies. That is that it can be used in multiple events when the car crashes twice maybe.
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In more slow events, run off-roads events.
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Outside of Sweden Volvo Cars’ crash test laboratory has an extremely good reputation and is still classed as one of the best in the world.
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Traffic safety researcher Professor Adrian Hobbs at EORN cab is of the opinion that Volvo produces invaluable knowledge here.
Adrain Hobbs
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If you want to understand about safety the first thing you have to do is you have to investigate road accidents.
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Volvo has their own team that investigates accidents, they’ve got that information.
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Then with their test facility they can reproduce the big problems, they can understand about them, they can develop solutions and then they can test them.
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You need to have the facilities in order to test the cars and test the components.
Volvo has got an excellent facility to do that.
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This is our main test track so we can take the car and go into the barrier or we can take the car and go into the other car coming from the other test track
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Or we can reverse this test track and take the car outdoors and do roll over testing.
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This crash test barrier weighs 850 tons and is movable on air cushions and we use it to crash cars into it.
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And it’s a very flexible system. On each end of the barrier here we can actually attach different types of impact barriers, like full rigid barriers like we have here,
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Or we can have a deformable front end of another car. We can have poles and we can turn it around and we can also move the barrier out of the way
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when we do the car to car crashes or car to truck crashes.
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The fact that you can re-construct any crash situation occurring in the real world you can learn more,
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and get new crash test to address and that way the research as well as the product development has evolved over the years.
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For Volvo Cars traffic safety has always been one if it’s most important core values. And it has no plan to change this strategy in any way.
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This is an operation that goes through continual development.
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And even if today’s cars are considerably safer than they were only a few years ago,
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there is always something that can be improved that will make both the car and traffic safer.
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Another future scenario that we will use this test facility to, which we already do, is to test the mitigation prior to a crash
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Breaking, pre-breaking the car maybe or making multiple scenarios where we have an active safety part as well as the passive safety
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Combination of those safety aspects is the future.
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Well if we look at the past ten years we’ve been taking humble steps every day in building our knowledge and
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increasing the performance of our safety systems in our cars
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And that will continue over the coming ten years. I will think that we will see some breakthrough technologies
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being put to the market both when it comes to how we can protect when a crash occurs,
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but more importantly we can prevent crashes from occurring in the first place.
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So hopefully in a few decades even further this centre will be obsolete.